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In 1962, a group of striking factory workers was massacred in the industrial Russian town of Novocherkassk. The shocking event, and the ensuing cover-up, is explored in intimate and meticulous detail by veteran filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky in Dear Comrades!, this year’s submission from Russia to the International Feature Oscar race.

With DoP Andrey Naidenov, Konchalovsky uses his trademark multi-camera shooting method and opts for a bleak look: black and white, with a 1:33 aspect ratio that suits the 60s period. The story centers on Lyuda (Yuliya Vysotskaya), a Communist party official who’s having a joyless affair with a married colleague and living with her teenage daughter Svetka (Yuliya Burova) and elderly father (Sergei Erlish). A dutiful employee, Lyuda speaks up in crisis meetings with the authorities, suggesting harsh penalties for the rebellious workers, who are complaining about lower pay and a rise in food prices. She may live to...

“What am I supposed to believe in if not communism?” Lyudmila stutters, drunk and disheveled, toward the end of Andrei Konchalovsky’s Dear Comrades!. A Stalin devotee and World War II veteran, she serves as a Communist Party official in her native Novocherkassk, a town in southern Ussr. But her unquestioning ideology suddenly wavers after a strike at the local factory is quelled with deadly force by the Kgb and Red Army forces. Seldom known outside Russia, the real-life massacre shook Novocherkassk on June 2, 1962, claiming the lives of 26 unarmed civilians. Dear Comrades! is a faithful and impeccably crafted exhumation of the tragedy—an event the Soviet Union kept secret until its dissolution in the early nineties. Konchalovsky has cited films such as Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1957 The Cranes Are Flying and Grigori Chukhray’s 1959 Ballad of a Soldier as stylistic reference points, and indeed—shot by Andrey Naidenov in stark, gorgeous...

Dear Comrades Trailer Andrei Konchalovsky‘s Dear Comrades (2020) movie trailer has been released by Neon and stars Julia Vysotskaya, Vladislav Komarov, Andrei Gusev, Yulia Burova, Sergei Erlish, and Alexander Maskelyne. Crew Konchalovskiy wrote the screenplay for Dear Comrades. Andrey Naydenov crafted the cinematography for the film. Plot Synopsis Dear Comrades‘ plot synopsis: “When the communist government raises food [...]

Continue reading: Dear Comrades (2020) Movie Trailer: Yuliya Vysotskaya witnesses a Food Strike Massacre in Andrei Konchalovsky’s Film...

Andrei Konchalovsky’s account of the day Red Army soldiers and Kgb snipers opened fire on strikers is a rage-filled triumph

Anger burns a hole through the screen in this stark monochrome picture from veteran director Andrei Konchalovsky: a gruelling re-enactment of the hushed-up Novocherkassk massacre in western Russia in 1962, when Red Army soldiers and Kgb snipers opened fire on unarmed striking workers, killing an estimated 80 people. It was a day of spiritual nausea for the Soviet Union, which had only just entered Khrushchev’s new de-Stalinised era of supposed enlightenment – a postwar civilian bloodbath that was the Soviets’ Sharpeville, or Kent State, or Bloody Sunday, or indeed the Corpus Christi massacre in Mexico City that featured in Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma.

Yuliya Vysotskaya – a longtime Konchalovsky player – plays Lyuda, a Communist party official and single mother who lives in a tiny flat in Novocherkassk with her 18-year-old daughter Svetka...

When we first encounter Lyuda, we barely see her face. She's getting out of bed, watched by her lover Loginov (Vladislav Komarov), who is both married and her superior on the Party Committee. She's framed as the object of his gaze, a headless piece of statuary, bright light streaming into the timeless room and illuminating her curves as they discuss rising food prices and ritually reaffirm the party line to one another. The current shortages are just a minor hurdle on the path to great prosperity. In 2021, UK viewers may find this refrain familiar.

At home with her elderly father (Sergei Erlish) and teenage daughter Svetka (Yuliya Burova), Lyuda doesn't seem much affected by the shortages. Her problems are those of many a middle class mother; her prejudices likewise. as she tries to police Svetka's sexuality and lets her own frustrations spill...

With another day at the (virtual) 56th Chicago International Film Festival comes another batch to sift through. It was a lighter batch too, not just in numbers but also in runtimes. Day three consisted of two short documentaries and another scripted feature, but did the quality make up for quantity? Not quite, but at least they all had their moments.

Making its Midwest premiere at the festival is Gregory Monro’s Kubrick by Kubrick (Grade: C), a 72-minute documentary about Stanley Kubrick’s work. Here, Monro zips us from the filmmaker’s childhood to death, touching on a majority of his offerings in between. Yet it’s not so much Monro doing it: It’s Kubrick himself through interviews and recordings. The idea of making a documentary about the man isn’t inherently flawed, but this one’s approach is, lacking the insight or visuals to make it feel like...

The gears of oppressive government bureaucracy are designed to crush homegrown opposition before it becomes too threatening. In that sense, institutions and policies put in place by Hitler’s Third Reich and Trump’s Maga cult have a lot in common with those of 20th century Communist Russia, an ideological rope-a-dope that publically posited figureheads like Stalin and later Khrushchev as warriors of the people while privately undermining any citizen-led resistance with brutal force.

Andrei Konchalovsky’s great new film Dear Comrades! depicts such a response with the sobering understanding that historical events of any magnitude can be easily manipulated to match the motivations of those in power. Subverting these efforts means highlighting the prickly nuances of human experience under duress, and finding a sense of shared empathy in the images themselves. Shot in Academy ratio and striking black-and-white, the film becomes a detailed cinematic record of how compromise, ego,...

Above: Dear Comrades!After a week of four films a day, unhealthy amounts of coffee, and dangerously little sleep, the countless screenings you’ve been shuttled into tend to merge into one confused amalgam. You’ve watched enough films for creative pairings between the selection to start percolating, and a great double bill came about yesterday, as the Lido welcomed back Andrei Konchalovsky and his latest, Dear Comrades! I watched it as a storm raged over the Lido, the thunders roaring above the roof of the Sala Darsena, a fitting soundtrack for a film that unearthed a tragic chapter of Soviet history, and brought me back to another Golden Lion contender from a few days ago, Quo Vadis, Aida? Both Konchalovsky and Jasmila Žbanić’s films home in on unspeakable massacres, and follow women struggling to protect their families against the forces of History. Incidentally, both are also among the...

Paradise (Ray) Film Movement Director: Andrey Konchalovsky Written by: Andrey Konchalovsky, Elena Kiseleva Cast: Yuliya Vysotskaya, Peter Kurth, Viktor Sukhorukov, Philippe Duquesne, Thomas Darchinger Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 10/2/17 Opens: October 6, 2017 In the final paragraph of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities,” Sidney Carton does a far, far better thing than […]

The post Paradise Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Andrei Konchalovsky's Holocaust-themed film Paradise won top honors at Russia's annual Golden Eagle Awards, nabbing the award for best film at Friday's ceremony.

The film, which had been in the running for best foreign Oscar until earlier this week when it failed to make the final five shortlist, also picked up best director for Konchalovsky and best female lead for his actress wife, Yuliya Vysotskaya.

The awards coincided with Holocaust Memorial Day, which marks the anniversary of the liberation by Soviet forces during World War Two of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

Konchalovksy, speaking at the awards ceremony at Moscow's...

Chicago – The mind boggles when attempting to comprehend the unmitigated disaster known as “The Nutcracker: The Untold Story,” which was titled “The Nutcracker in 3D” during its theatrical run. Other bad films have tried to adapt Tchaikovsky’s ballet classic for the big screen (remember Macaulay Culkin’s version from the ’90s?), but none have sunk to the depths of appalling ineptitude inhabited by this Christmas turkey.

Far from his glory days of “Uncle Vanya,” Russian filmmaker Andrey Konchalovskiy has made a film so deplorable that it’s guaranteed to traumatize children while offending their parents. His take on the material is so dark, twisted and thoroughly unwatchable that it inspires guffaws of incredulity. Yet don’t be fooled into thinking that this film is a guilty pleasure. It quickly exits “so-bad-it’s-funny” territory after its opening moments, before emerging as a self-important, staggeringly wrongheaded meditation on Nazism.

Blu-ray Rating:...

This Saturday will see Russian director and writer Andrei Konchalovsky at the Barbican Centre for a screen talk on his internationally acclaimed and award winning film, House of Fools (2002). After the screening he will be in conversation with Sight & Sound’s Edward Lawernson, followed by a Q & A session.

House of Fools is a wonderfully captivating anti-war exposé set in a mental institution on the Russian boarder at the outbreak of the Chechen War. The pain and difficulty of the mental and physical illnesses of the characters is deployed to contrast insanity and sanity, the real and the fantastic as the inmates are caught in a conflict zone as the rebels take hold. They eventually demonstrate that there is greater insanity in war than any mental institution.

One of the inmates, the mesmerizing and good-hearted Zhanna (played by Yuliya Vysotskaya in what is clearly one of her finest performances) attempts...

Gloss, released in 2007, will be screening at the Barbican this month on Saturday 20 with an introduction from the director himself as part of the Andrei Konchalovsky Directorspective. Each film has been chosen by Konchalovsky and the season will reflect the breadth of his critically acclaimed work.

Gloss exposes the obsession western culture has with beauty and wealth. Yuliya Vysotskaya stars as Galya, a young women with dreams of making it big in Moscow’s fashion industry as a model. Leaving her mining town for the dreamed of life of glitz and glamour, Galya learns that all that glitters is not gold. She manoeuvres herself through the Moscow underworld of designers, photographers, high-class pimps, Russian oligarchs and Mafia gangsters, realising that in order to achieve what she initially perceives as success, she must sell herself heart, mind, body and soul.

Konchalovsky scathingly attacks consumerist culture and how companies market their “products...

Batsh*t crazy, and not necessarily in a good way, Andrei Konchalovsky's The Nutcracker in 3D is a bizarre concoction, confounding yet fascinating, an odd mixture of children's fantasy and Nazi nightmares. John Turturro sings and dances as the Rat King, Nathan Lane croons two songs in a cracked Russian accent and talks to the camera, toys are burnt in hulking factories that resemble concentration camps, and a young black toy comes to life and speaks in the worst Jamaican accent since Brad Pitt in Meet Joe Black.

It's a head-scratcher, all right, but I couldn't look away. It's like candy that instantly rots your teeth yet leaves a sweet smell in your mouth.

Elle Fanning stars as Mary, who lives opulently with her family in Vienna, Austria in the 1920s. Her parents, played by Richard Grant and Yuliya Vysotskaya (the director's wife), are heading off for the evening...

ComingSoon.net has your exclusive first look at a new clip from The Nutcracker in 3D , opening in theaters on November 24. Written and directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, the family adventure stars Elle Fanning, Nathan Lane, Frances de la Tour, John Turturro, Richard E. Grant, Yulia Visotskaya and Aaron Michael Drozin. The Nutcracker in 3D follows nine-year-old Mary (Fanning) whose dull Viennese Christmas is suddenly filled with excitement and adventure following the arrival of her beloved Uncle Albert (Lane) and his gift of an enchanted nutcracker. On Christmas night, Mary's new friend, The Nutcracker (Charlie Rowe) or "Nc," comes to life and takes her on a wondrous journey into his magical world of fairies, sugarplums, and other Christmas toys which come to life. Mary...

Hong Kong International Film Festival

HONG KONG -- In what is sure to be viewed as a Russian spin on The Devil Wears Prada, director Andrei Konchalovsky (Sibiriada, Runaway Train) turns an only partially jaundiced eye at the modern fixation on celebrity and fashion.

This is somewhat outdated and well-worn material, and explorations of the encroachment of Western celebrity culture on developing nations isn't new either. On top of that, a good amount of the film relies on tired character archetypes. Although cinematically polished and possessing an engaging lead, Gloss never manages to take flight as an effective satire.

Any film skewering the fashion industry and what was once called The Jet Set is likely to get attention from independent and Art House distributors. Gloss certainly has the production values for limited overseas release, but it's just as likely to be consigned to DVD after a spin on the festival circuit.

Galya (an appropriately low-rent Yulia Vysotskaya) is a working-class seamstress in the backwater town of Rostov-on-Don who dreams of becoming Russia's next great supermodel. After she's featured in a second-rate ad in a local newspaper, she decides the time is right to move to Moscow. She borrows enough money to get there from her on-and-off thug boyfriend, Vitya (Ilya Isaev), and quickly finesses her way into the office of the editor of Beauty magazine.

The editor, Marina (Irina Rozanova), lays the brutal truth on Galya: She doesn't stand a chance of making her mag's cover. Only temporarily defeated, Galya lands on her feet by working as a seamstress for the Karl Lagerfeld-like Mark (Yefim Shifrin), stumbles (literally) onto the runway in his new collection's show, loses her job and winds up working for erstwhile agent and escort mogul Petya (Gennady Smirnov). In the end, she does make the cover of Beauty after being transformed into a latter-day Grace Kelly and marrying up to politico Klimenko (Alekander Domogarov).

There's a lot going on in Gloss, and Konchalovsky and co-writer Dunya Smirnova go to great pains to draw links among fashion, prostitution, power and celebrity while at the same time peeling some of the glamor from the glitterati. The film is populated by shallow, fundamentally unhappy people who are simply spinning their wheels.

Marina's magazine is just a little behind the curve, and she feels her age when she looks at her competition, some of which comes in the form of her arrogant, needling daughter Nastya (Olga Arntgolts). Rozanova is affecting as a former beauty facing forced retirement, but she's only in Galya's sphere for a fleeting moment. Gloss is loaded with partially explored ideas, but therein lies the problem: They're also partially unexplored.

GLOSS

A Mosfilm, Motion Investment Group, Cadran Prods., Studio Canal, Backup Films production

Sales agent: Fortissimo Films

Credits:

Director: Andrei Konchalovsky

Screenwriters: Andrei Konchalovsky, Dunya Smirnova

Producer: Andrei Konchalovsky

Director of photography: Mariya Solovyova

Production designer: Yekaterina Zaletayeva

Music: Eduard Artemyev

Co-producers: Jeremy Burdek, Nadia Khamlichi, Adrian Politowski

Editor: Olga Grinshpun

Cast:

Galya: Yulia Vysotskaya

Zhanna: Olga Meloyanina

Vitya: Ilya Isaev

Marina: Irina Rozanova

Nastya: Olga Arntgolts

Mark: Yefim Shifrin

Petya: Gennady Smirnov

Klimenko: Alekander Domogarov

Running time -- 118 minutes

No MPAA rating...